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With its colourful coral gardens and abundant marine life, the Maldives has a deserved reputation as one of the world’s best diving destinations. However, that reputation could be under threat as nearly two thirds of the archipelago’s coral reefs are reported to have been bleached.

Bleaching turns reefs a ghostly white and happens when corals become stressed by high temperatures, which have been a particular feature of 2016; a year that looks set to be the hottest on record.

This coral bleaching event has been the worst on recordCredit:
XL CATLIN SEAVIEW SURVEY

A survey of the Maldives’ reefs – conducted by the Maldives Marine Research Center (MRC), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) – found bleaching on an devastating scale.

“Over 60 per cent of the coral colonies that we assessed were bleached – in some sites as much as 90 per cent were bleached,” said Dr. Ameer Abdulla, research team leader and Senior Advisor to IUCN on Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

"Bleaching does not always equal coral mortality as coral can recover. We are truly hoping that the bleaching we observed does not turn into mortality as that would be serious."

According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), some 25 per cent of all marine life depends on coral reefs.

Some 25 per cent of all marine life depends on coral reefs

Local economies also rely upon them, particularly in countries like the Maldives, where tourism and fishing are the primary industries: the Government of Maldives claim the archipelago’s marine and coastal biodiversity is responsible for some 89 per cent of the country’s GDP.

A quarter of all marine life is thought to depend on coral reefsCredit:
AP/FOTOLIA

“The reality is the commitments the countries have made will produce 2.7C of warming – and that’s if they all stick to their commitments, which, of course, mostly they won’t,” said Professor Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University.

Speaking to Telegraph Travel, Professor Wadhams, whose book about climate change, A Farewell to Ice, will be released next month, said there are reasons to be optimistic.

“If we’re going to actually bring the climate under control we won’t do it by reducing carbon emissions, we can only do it by taking carbon out of the atmosphere through direct air capture,” he said.

“I’m optimistic that direct air capture technology can be developed in an affordable way and that would solve the whole problem – CO2 and methane are the villains here so if you can take them out of the atmosphere then all the climate consequences go away.”

Such technology would be game changing, particularly for the 400,000 odd inhabitants who live in the Maldives, which is very much a paradise in peril; the highest point on the 1,190-island archipelago is just 2.4m, leaving the nation extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change.